Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

.

Tidbit: Job Opportunity at International Trademark Association

We’d like to remind our readers of this job opportunity at INTA. Please note, the deadline to apply is Today – April 22nd, 2015. Read on for more: An exciting opportunity has opened up at the International Trademark Association (INTA). The role is for an India Consultant, to be based out of New Delhi.  The Consultant is expected to provide consultancy services to INTA; specifically assist in strengthening INTA’s presence in the country by supporting policy efforts throughout the region; growing […]

Tidbit: Job Opportunity at International Trademark Association Read More »

SJM, Sangh Parivar’s economic wing, raises concerns with draft IPR Policy

In a very notable development, Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), an economic wing of the Sangh Parivar, has raised serious concerns with the draft IPR Policy including concerns over its constituent members. Before I mention what the concerns were, I’ll put forward some background to place these comments in context: The Sangh Parivar is a group of Hindu nationalist organizations (which include the ruling party BJP) that have been founded/inspired by members/ideas of the RSS. While these different organizations within the

SJM, Sangh Parivar’s economic wing, raises concerns with draft IPR Policy Read More »

Data exclusivity back on the table for India

D.G. Shah, Secretary General of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance sends us news that will be of interest to many of our readers. He says, “… Government plans to introduce a Pesticides (Amendment) Bill in the Parliament during the current session. The Bill has a provision that not only makes India’s Intellectual Property (IP) regime TRIPS Plus but would also eliminate competition and create legal monopoly for agro-chemicals and pesticides making them unaffordable to small farmers. The Bill proposes to introduce

Data exclusivity back on the table for India Read More »

New Wikileaks of TPP Investment chapter

Earlier this morning, Wikileaks put out a draft Investment chapter of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, dated 20th January, 2015. To quote Julian Assange on this: “The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies.” We’ve previously written about the leaked IP chapter

New Wikileaks of TPP Investment chapter Read More »

India puts Draft Model Bilateral Investment Treaty up for comments

MyGov.in, the government’s online platform for ‘Citizen Participation towards Good Governance’, has a Draft Indian Model Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) text that is up for comments till 5pm, April 10th 2015. The platform has in fact made it very easy to comment by providing a comment box type feature not too different from most websites’ comments feature. You can find the text as well as the place to comment at this link here. I’ve just skimmed through the text so

India puts Draft Model Bilateral Investment Treaty up for comments Read More »

Guest Post: Shouldn’t We Liberate Laws from the Clutches of Copyright Law?

We’re delighted to bring our readers a very pertinent guest post by a dear friend of the blog, Dr. Arul George Scaria, assistant professor at National Law University, Delhi – discussing a very basic issue that, if memory serves me right, has somehow escaped our attention on this blog! While we have earlier discussed whether “standards” can/should be copyrighted (see post here), the current post deals with the issue of the very text of our laws being copyrighted. We’d love

Guest Post: Shouldn’t We Liberate Laws from the Clutches of Copyright Law? Read More »

More Submissions on the Draft IP Policy

In a few previous posts, we’ve taken a look at some critical comments that have been submitted to the DIPP, on the draft IP policy prepared by the IP Think tank – see Prof. N.S. Gopalakrishnan and Dr. T.G. Agitha’s views here, and some comments by other academics and civil society here and here. It so happens that several of the other comments submitted are currently available online. As they haven’t (yet?) been made available on the DIPP website, I

More Submissions on the Draft IP Policy Read More »

Guest Post: Academics submits critical comments to DIPP on draft National IPR Policy by IP Think Tank

Raghul Sudheesh, a close friend of the blog, brings us some very important perspective on the draft IP policy from some of India’s top IP scholars, Prof N.S. Gopalakrishnan and Dr T.G. Agitha, both from Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). Prof N.S.Gopalakrishnan is internationally recognized as one of India’s foremost IPR experts, and has played a very influential role in policy making, international negotiations, and legislative drafting. They are very critical of the draft National IPR policy, pointing out several

Guest Post: Academics submits critical comments to DIPP on draft National IPR Policy by IP Think Tank Read More »

A Warm Welcome to our new SpicyIP Fellows for 2015-2016!

We’re very happy to announce the results of the third edition of our SpicyIP Fellowship programme for the year 2015-2016! From over 40 submissions in the last few weeks, 22 were selected for publication on the blog. The criteria for selection included topic choice, research, analysis, clarity and language skills. The year long Fellowship begins on February 1st, 2015 and runs on till January 31st, 2016. The competition was stiff, with six candidates making it to our finalists list. After due consideration, we’re happy to

A Warm Welcome to our new SpicyIP Fellows for 2015-2016! Read More »

Guest Post: Garcia v. Google: Opening a Can of Worms?

In her third post for our SpicyIP Fellowship applicant series, Arundathi Venkataraman, brings us her analysis of the now (in)famous Garcia v. Google case, looking at how it might’ve been dealt with in the Indian context, looking into ‘consent’ and moral rights of a performer. Arundathi is a 4th year student at NLU-Jodhpur. Her previous posts for the Fellowship have included “GI for Yoga? (De)Merits and Consequences” and “Are Copyrights in Logos considered Trademarks for the Purpose of Taxation?” [The deadline for

Guest Post: Garcia v. Google: Opening a Can of Worms? Read More »

Scroll to Top